Snow in November

This week has seen the most snow in the UK at this time of year for 17 years. This has been such a gift for scrapbookers leading up to Christmas. I've managed to take the annual Christmas photo of our three actually in the snow. I attempted Christmas hats too, but you'll notice the ginger one decided on a pink flower hairband instead.

I was really pleased with my holly photo and I think that could be a great first photo for a December journal, although the thought of starting one of those, may be a step too far as I'm still making Christmas presents. I am starting a new class tomorrow though called "Picture the Holidays" over on Big Picture Classes, but as this will be a photography class, I'm hoping it will be relatively easy to squeeze it in.

We got creative in the snow and made a snow reindeer...

Watercolour Christmas cards

I've been making my Christmas cards this week and I've managed to finish 60 of them - phew! I've stamped the design on fabric and painted with watercolours. If you'd like to see more about it, check out my post for Bubbly Scrumptious here.

Colour! or is it color?

Today I was really excited to see my name on the Prima blog again! This time I won a "leave a comment to win" type post about a new class run by Nic Howard at Big Picture Scrapbooking, who is one of the very talented people on the Prima Design Team. I've won a spot in her class - hurray! I have absolutely no time to fully take part in it at the moment, but I think I'll put the notes to one side and really enjoy it after all the busyness of Christmas is over.

As for the title of this post, that's the name of Nic's class - I think the answer is "colour".

I should also add that the picture here is by the blonde one, it's not a project from the new class!

On the beach

I've been a bit quiet on the blog this week as I'm working through Christmas preparations, but here's some pictures from my sheer beach album I've made as my Saturday post for Bubbly Scrumptious. If you'd like to see more pages and find out how it's put together, click here.

Beloved

After three weeks of painting layers of gesso and paint and stamping and gluing, my "Beloved" album is finished as part of the "Fun with Fabric" class with Donna. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. The photos don't really portray the different layers and textures of the pages - it's even better in real life :)

Here are the pages...

Page 1 - using a "Loved" iron-on...


Pages 2 & 3

Pages 4 & 5, including an extra clear acetate page I added myself with foam stamped flowers with bling centres (on both sides) and words cut out from book paper and inked.

Pages 6 & 7 - with another extra clear page with a swirl made from book paper flourishes and flowers and some flower stamps from Donna's "Insightful Meadow" set, stamped with Staz-on.

Pages 8 & 9

Page 10

Excited about Tree Hugging

Over on the Prima blog there is a sketch challenge once a month caled Build A Page (or BAP) and last month I e-mailed in this page as my entry. I was really excited to see my page on their blog yesterday in their "we also liked" section. Woo hoo! You can see the Prima post here .

This is also my Bubbly Scrumptious post for this week, so you can see the page in more detail here .

Works in progress

I have been thinking about Christmas and I am determined to be ready early this year and not have a stressed out December. How many times have I said this in the past?! I already have most of the shopping done, but I love giving handmade Christmas presents and cards and this is where my time usually runs out.

So this week I've made a start on my cards... (using inspiration from the Donna Downey class)

And I've started knitting to make presents for the smallest people on my present list... (The pattern comes from a lovely book called "Itty Bitty Toys")

And it seems like I've been a bit quiet about the Donna Downey class for a couple of weeks, but that's because we are working on an album project spread over 3 weeks and we've had two weeks of building up layers of paint and letting things dry. We're going to finish the album off this week and bring all the elements together.

You'll notice a big spray bottle of water in the middle of the picture which has been used to spray on the pages and help the paint run ("Drippage" as Donna calls it). The ginger one has been helping me with my "homework" by spraying my pages, but she got a bit overenthusiastic and started spraying towards my trays of scrapbook papers - Nooooo! Maybe not such a good idea after all.

Firework Party

Here's my page for Bubbly Scrumptious this week. I actually managed a topical page today, although it is with a picture from last year that I finally managed to finish. To see more about it click HERE.

Snow Whites

I'm gradually working through my stack of photos waiting to be scrapped and here's one that's been waiting since last Christmas. It was a picture of the girls in their new costumes, watching their new Snow White DVD on Christmas morning. This is one of the pages where I've had a layout fixed in my head for months, but it didn't seem exciting enough. I added in some swirls, made in the same way as my Summer Swirls page, but this time I used Stickles glitter glue to make the dots. I think they add a bit of Christmas sparkle.

Finding Fimo

This weekend I had a big sort out of my art cupboard and I found my boxes of Fimo samples from when I was working as a demonstrator. I'd totally forgotten about these projects as I made them a good few years ago, but I'm still rather pleased with how they turned out and so I thought I'd share them with you.

I used to demonstrate Fimo at the annual Dolls House fair at the NEC and I made this market stall and picnic following instructions from Angie Scarr's book "Making Miniature Food and Market Stalls"
I think my favourites are the apples

Here's another project for the dolls house fair - my mini Henry VIII

This is one of my favourite Fimo projects and he hasn't been consigned to a box in the cupboard. He looks after my books for me. He's not made of as much Fimo as it looks like as he is built up around a core of scrunched up foil.

Here's the owl's friend, Mr Kingfisher...

These are some Christmas baubles I made for Practical Crafts magazine...

This is my "Less is More" project of very simple rainbow beads, which I still enjoy wearing. In case this looks familiar, I made it on Create and Craft on my one and only appearance!